The other night my friend Chris and I put together several videos to help people get started playing on Vassal. This series is a little more than an hour in length if you watch all four videos and should be suitable to orient everyone whether you’re brand new to Vassal or if you’re already a pro on Vassal with other games. Here’s a brief summary of the videos with links to each:

Part 1: Installing Vassal and Module: (10:56 min)

In this video we really start from scratch and show you where to find the Vassal software, the current X-Wing module, and the associated extensions. From there, we actually go through installing the software and setting up the module and extensions.

Part 2: Orientation to Vassal Interface (13:40 min)

In this video, I guide Chris through the basics of Vassal and where to find the basic functionality for playing X-Wing. This is a key video to watch, even for Vassal pros, because the X-Wing module is very detailed.

Part 3: Building your Squad (10:54 min)

This is perhaps the video that will save you the most time as it shows you how to construct your squad in a log file so that you can just log on and play and not make your opponent wait around while you set up your ships, counters, and upgrades.

I made some log files that have all the ships with there stats, dials, and cards. I've put these up in my drop box, for people to download. These are a big time saver.

Imperials:

• TIE Fighter
• TIE Advanced
• TIE Interceptor
• Firespray-31 (Slave I)

Rebels:

• X-Wing
• Y-Wing
• A-Wing
• YT-1300 (Millennium Falcon)

Part 4: Playing the Game (27:51 min)

In this video, Chris and I walk through logging on to Vassal and setting up a “room” to play a game and go through a few mock turns showing you how to set your maneuvers, assign your actions, and go through a brief combat example.

I hope people find this helpful and informative.

Watching them right now.

I already had Vassal installed, with all the modules with the exact correct version numbers that you display in your first video. I did try to get going with the movement mechanics on my own a week ago, but it didn't really click with me, let's hope these vids do the trick.

Also, there's never anyone online in the server. Is that a problem on my end, or it's not popular yet?

Alright, I'm done watching the videos. I think I'm ready to start some modest point-level games. I really like the toggling firing arc. Here are some thoughts:

-There are so many windows that overlap each other, it looks tedious to switch between the map, the player hands, the dice window, the chit windows, the chat window. At least playing with skype removes the need for that last window. I think in general due to the state of this program, you just can't pass up the efficiency brought by skype.

-Managing the template movements seemed unprecise and slow, but thankfully, after trying it out for myself, I can see the context menu of any ship allows you to automatically perform any template movement, without manually moving a movement token yourself, adjust to grooves, then move the ship, etc. This is a huge time saver and it's good to know since the videos don't hint you towards that

-I don't get why both players shouldn't set their pilot+upgrade cards in the common out-of-bounds red area in the map window, rather than in their player hand window - this would remove the need to manage a window.

-I'm not good at remember the pilot special abilities, on top of every effect of every upgrade cards. how do you scan your own card graphics to replace the ones ingame?

-setting a stress token, or any kind of special status (action, ion, etc) on a ship moves the center of the graphic slightly - it looks like it defines a new center for the newly formed square ship base + status icon combo. This can be problematic as it could nudge a ship outside a firing arc, or bump it away or into a new range of some other ship.

-All in all, it looks like I'm blasting this but in reality, it's pretty solid compared to other clients I've tried, like OCTGN for card games, which crashes often for some of them (ie android:netrunner) but ok for some others (VTES). It looks like it'll be a great way to get some games going, if I can coordinate with people on the FFG forums or in BoardGameGeek forums.

Mu0n said:

The 4.1 version of X-Wing is the only one that has the programmed movements. It's a nice feature.

If your having trouble remembering your cards and abilities, I recomment this site: http://home.comcast.net/~jason.fuller/rebels.html?scroll=false If you have this site up in a browser, then you can just look at the cards when you need.

The online community is small so far, but I'm running a Tournament to try and build the community and help people get started playing.

The interface needs work for sure, but it's still pretty good.

We usually play with the cards on the "red section" of the map board. What we have noticed in our playing is that my 24" monitor has less viewable than his 27" monitor. I know, you guys are thinking, no $hit, but we run the same resolution. We chat using FaceTime, instead of Skype (does the same thing though).

The first game we played, we also built our squads with the cards from our sets…this also helped for abilities and critical hits.

also, make sure you have a two button mouse, the single button and magic touch (think apple) are not conducive to right clicking on the ships. My opponent had issues accidentally copying/pasting additional ships.

just some of my observations.

Thank you for the videos, guys. I hope to be joining up soon.

Quick question about video 4: when Night Beast was taking hits, the player was reducing the ship's hull value instead of drawing damage cards face-down. I know they weren't critical hits, but I'd thought that part of the point of drawing regular damage cards was that this would pull certain types of criticals out of the damage deck. Is this a change in the rules? Pardon my ignorance - I only have the rulebook, and haven't looked for any FAQs…

Anyway, great videos!

I. J. Thompson said:

Good catch, that was just an oversite on our part. You should pull damage cards for you ships for the exact reason you stated.

Anyone interested in a quick game? I'm loaded up with a 100-pts rebel squad right now.

Hi,

I am new rather new to X-Wing, got it last Christmas but only played a couple times as I live in the boonies. I recently found out about Vassal, and you guys did an awesome job to explain how to use it. Within a night, it was installed, working, and playable (I played a solitaire to make sure I got the hang of it).

So, if anyone is looking for X-Wing online and don't mind paying with a beginner, I am available nearly every evening, 7:30 pm EST.

Cheers

Ceodryn